John B. Judis’ Wrongheaded Screed Against the Republicans: Is This the New TNR?

So much for civility: John B. Judis' wrongheaded screed against the GOP is illustrated with multiple elephants, rampaging through the capital Godzilla-style. (And don't miss Ed Driscoll on the new TNR article: "Sleepwalking Through History.")

John B. Judis, senior editor of The New Republic, can be a top-flight reporter; he has in the past done first-rate reporting about politics. He thinks about it on a serious level and tries to make judgments that take into account demographics and the current political scene. He has gone to contested areas to conduct interviews with regular people in the districts, as well as to spend time with prospective candidates and to travel with them during campaigns.

He can also be highly ideological and wrong-headed. With Ruy Teixeira, he wrote a highly acclaimed book, The Emerging Democratic Majority, (2002), which, somehow or other, never has seemed to quite emerge, although when Barack Obama was elected president, he argued that the 2008 results had vindicated their analysis. Then, of course, came the 2010 mid-term elections, and the prognosis again looked rather dim, which Judis readily acknowledged.

Now, Judis has the cover story [which temporarily is behind TNR’s firewall but will eventually be posted for all to read] in the latest issue of TNR, “Return of the Republicans,” in which Judis does his best to demonize Republicans as totally evil and dangerous, as a political party that has departed from the American consensus, a group of “counterrevolutionaries” whose program “could imperil the country’s recovery-or even precipitate, as happened in 1937 and 1938, a double-dip recession.”

He argues that the Republicans, unlike the Democrats or the old Republican Party, have departed from the old paradigm of Clinton Rossiter, who in 1960, explained that our political parties are “creatures of compromise and moderation” that produce “coalitions of interest in which principle is muted and often even silenced.” That is why, Judis argues, America escaped violence and revolution during both wars and depression.

Now, he argues that the current Republicans, rather than following in the old direction, are determined to stand on principle. What he is doing, as Dennis Prager points out with other recent examples of the litany, is “libeling the Right.” In Judis’ eyes, only the Democratic Party maintains the Rossiter standard; the Republicans, as he says they did in the past:

[S]hut down the government, ambushed the president and his Cabinet with intrusive investigations into corruption—many of them mind-bogglingly trivial—and eventually tried to impeach President Bill Clinton on the most frivolous of grounds.

And in the present, during the past few years, they “disrupted the normal working of Congress and threatened not simply the president, but the power and prestige of the presidency.”

This means, Judis asserts, that in their desire to take power, they are doing so “at the cost of disrupting the political system.” To prove his argument, Judis goes back to the 1930s and the era of the New Deal, when old-style conservative Republicans from rural and small-town districts combined with Southern Democrats — the racist Dixiecrats — to oppose FDR’s New Deal legislation. Like today, these Republicans falsely accused the New Deal of moving to fascism and/or communism, and planning an American form of totalitarianism. He gives us a series of attacks from those days, from politicians like Arthur Vandenberg and Hamilton Fish, and groups like the American Liberty League. You get the picture: reactionary troglodytes used specious arguments to oppose progress.

FDR, of course, argued that he welcomed the opposition of congressmen like Hamilton Fish, and vowed to “push the money changers out of the temple.” But as I argued many years ago in an article I titled “The Myth of the New Deal,” the major New Deal reforms of the Second New Deal, supposedly achieved because of the mass protests of organized labor and the Left, were actually favored by and vigorously supported by the large commercial and financial interests. Judis cites the opposition from small business groups like the N.A.M., and ignores the powerful corporate leaders, for example, who visited the White House to support and to propose the Social Security Act. There was a time when serious left-wing scholars, like G. William Domhoff whom I quote in the article, understood this truth.

What Judis does to demonize the old Republicans is to pick among those who actually were reactionaries, and who did not comprehend how the New Deal legislation served the interests of the actual corporate powers who benefited from New Deal reforms. Then he jumps to the present, to show today’s Republicans using similar rhetoric, and to hence argue that like in the past, the Republicans are opposing progress — and trying to destroy America in the process.

He refers favorably to someone he calls a “New Deal liberal Democrat” from the South who supported FDR (one of few) — Sen. Claude Pepper. He neglects to inform readers that Pepper’s nickname given him by his opponents was “Red” Pepper, referring not to his hair, but to his politics — since Pepper was an ardent fellow-traveler of the American Communist Party, a Senator who told Americans that Joe Stalin was a “man Americans could trust.”

Judis is right that there was certainly a conservative coalition opposed to the New Deal made up of Southern Democrats and northern Republicans who branded the New Deal as fascist, but he neglects to note that the Socialist leader Norman Thomas also proclaimed that the New Deal was an American version of fascism — and Thomas was anything but any kind of conservative. Of course, during the years of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, so did the American Communists brand FDR a proto-fascist and condemn the New Deal as fascist. As for the New Deal being responsible for a renewed recession, as Judis does not indicate, current scholarship indicates that this conclusion is now fairly mainstream — and that conservatives said it was true back then does not make it wrong.

His main point is simply that “the conservative coalition of the 1930s is the Republican Party of today,” one that sees liberalism “as the product of communism or fascism that had been imported from Europe … obsessed with strict fealty to an anachronistic reading of the Constitution”; investigated opponents to stop the administration’s program; and argued against government spending. If it was wrong then, says Judis, it must be wrong now. But today’s Republicans are even worse, because now, unlike the past, there are no moderate Republicans willing to work in a bipartisan fashion with Democrats on behalf of the American people.

Now, he claims, Republicans are trying to dismantle the entire New Deal edifice, not to stop overextended programs rejected by our countrymen, like ObamaCare. It is a pure and simple “counterrevolutionary party” that wants victory at any cost, even if it means destroying our entire government. He of course cites Newt Gingrich as a prime example — ignoring the fact that the current new speaker of the House is not Gingrich, but John Boehner, who, as everyone knows, is acting in a very different fashion than Gingrich did in the Clinton years. Yes, he manages to write that Boehner and Mitch McConnell “are more cautious than Gingrich” — hard to ignore that — but says “they will be vigorously pushed to the right” by the Republican Congress and by other conservatives.

What you will not see anywhere in his article is an assessment of the current Democratic Party, and any awareness that one of the reasons the Republicans have made such major advances is that the Democratic Party has been pushed far to the left. In fact, the leadership of Pelosi and Reid and their supporters took pride in how so many Blue Dog Democrats lost in the mid-term election, because that gave the left wing of of their party more control! There is no discussion of the arrogant attempt of Reid to push through a new stimulus at the last moment, and of the mechanism by which the Democrats forced through an unpopular health care program by failing to consider any of the valid criticisms made of it by opponents.

Instead, he bemoans that there are no more “moderate pro-labor Republicans,” without mentioning that there are almost no more moderate centrist Democrats left who have any influence. I don’t recall Judis, for example, backing Joe Lieberman against Ned Lamont in the last Connecticut Senate race. And then Judis moans about think tanks — they’re all extremist, like AEI and Heritage. I don’t notice Judis mentioning John Podesta’s Center for American Progress, which put out a recommendation that Obama rule by executive decree and bypass Congress, or the Old Left and still existing Institute for Policy Studies, whose staff has put out similar recommendations. As we all know, extremists are only on the right.

According to Judis, Republicans, conservative think tanks, and Fox News “speak the language of insurgency and insurrection.” A while ago, I blogged about Frances Fox Piven’s editorial in The Nation, in which she editorially calls for insurrection and violence. I guess that missed Judis’s reading list. Or is it ok when she does it, since Piven is a voice of the Left? As for AEI, its chief is a “right-wing propagandist.” Actually, he is an academic economist. Would Judis like to be described not as a journalist, but as a left-wing propagandist? Or a Marxist ideologue, since he revealed in early 2009 that he again considers himself a Marxist? (Shortly before Obama took office, Judis wrote, “A decade ago, I might have been embarrassed to admit that I was raised on Marx and Marxism, but I am convinced that the left is coming back.” Ok — I should have begun my article calling him a left-wing Marxist ideologue, not a “top-flight reporter.”)

Finally, let me call my readers’ attention to two articles in the Jan. 17th issue of The Weekly Standard. Without having read Judis, its authors reveal what is so wrong about his analysis. First, Jay Cost writes about the Republican Party of the past. But unlike Judis, Cost explains that the current Republican Party is strong in areas like that where John Boehner hails from, and reflects “the rise of the postwar suburbs” that swung voters who used to vote Democrat to the GOP, “which it has consistently supported for president since 1968.” These are, I might add, precisely the suburbs that, according to Judis, would be the heart of the new emerging Democratic majority. As Cost writes: “Over the last 60 years, Republican strength has moved southward and westward into territory once controlled by the Democrats.” He goes on to explain that “the pro-growth policies of the Republican Party made new suburbs a natural home for these voters.”

And Cost then mentions Judis’ vast omission — “the leftward drift of the Democratic party.” He is completely on target when he points out that “after the reforms of the Great Society, northern liberals acquired control of the party and pushed it away from the political center, alienating scores of old New Deal voters like culturally conservative Catholics.” He notes that these Catholics handed the Republicans a 20 point victory in the 2010 mid-term elections. Judis should know this. It was the thesis of my 1996 book, Divided They Fell:The Demise of the Democratic Party. I know Judis read it, because he wrote one of the blurbs for it, pointing out that “Radosh makes a good case for why the left must shoulder the responsibility” for the Democratic Party’s decline.

As for Judis’ new claim of extremism, Cost writes the following, to which Judis should take note:

Once upon a time, the Democrats promised a reasonable social safety net that would not impede growth. Social Security and Medicare were perfectly consistent, they argued, with 3 percent or better increases in annual GDP. Yet those days are long gone. Today’s Democrats might talk a good game about prosperity, fiscal responsibility, and a vibrant and secure middle class, but the proof is in the pudding: The last significant action of the 111th House saw a majority of all House Democrats vote to keep taxes low. But of the Democrats who are returning to the new Congress, a majority of them voted to raise taxes just as the economy is limping out of recession.

What the Republicans must do, this conservative author points out, is the following:

What the Republican party​—​supported as it is today by so many former Democrats​—​must do is what the Democrats used to claim to be able to do. The Republicans must find a way to sustain the entitlements that Americans have come to depend on​—​most notably Social Security and Medicare​—​without crippling the economy with increased levels of taxation. Liberal Democrats who demagogue about secret Republican schemes to destroy Social Security and Medicare have it exactly backwards. In truth, the Republican party​—​and only the Republican party​—​can save these entitlements without destroying the prospects for economic growth. The Democratic party can no longer be counted on to do this, which is why the GOP consists of so many old Democratic constituencies. This is the great mandate of the GOP: not to destroy the New Deal and Great Society, but to save their best elements from the ruinous ambitions of today’s liberal Democrats.

He says the Republicans must “sustain the entitlements,” but without “crippling the economy.” He does not say end them and go back to a complete 19th Century laissez-faire system, which is what Judis says is the Republican program. And Judis, as Cost predicts, is the man who leads the pack in demagoguery, arguing about non-existent plans to destroy Social Security and Medicare.

The other point Judis argues — that Republicans do not want bipartisanship — is covered in the article by Fred Barnes, who tells readers about how serious talks last fall between Senator Bob Corker and Senator Chris Dodd, who sought to work out a compromise on financial regulations, were ended on March 10th when the White House, deciding that they did not need Republican votes, pulled the plug on the bipartisan negotiations. As Barnes point out, Corker was furious when Obama came to the Senate Republican policy lunch and lectured them on the need for bipartisanship. I guess Judis also missed that issue of the Standard.

The truth is, as my historian friend Martin J. Sklar continually points out, the Republicans are today the party of progress and the future, and the Democrats, whom Judis heralds are the new reactionaries, are devoted to trying to create a command-state economy. And as National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru writes, “Judis is just ventilating his prejudices.” Too bad The New Republic sees fit to give this venting the lead position in its new issue.

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38 Comments, 23 Threads

1.
Gary Ogletree

I subscribed to In These Times when Judis was editor. I appreciated that Robert Mugabe was exposed as a homicidal dictator in those pages. Information without much spin. I guess those were John’s glory days.

If you want truthful reporting you probably enjoy comic parody that uses the truth to attack lefty liars. try this animated political satire for a huge truthful laugh. The progressives can’t stand being laughed at when they lie. It’s fun to slap the elites with humor. Watch “A Not Too Grimm Fairy Tale” here… http://www.marcrubin.com/Hairmerica.ivnu

The evils of McCarthyism. His allegations of enemy action within the US, that were so bad then, have been found to be substantially true. Those guys he said were “commies”, were indeed communist agents. It was just the way he said it that was wrong.
Similarly whatever the New Deal was supposed to be about, it achieved the introduction of state intervention at every level, which is what its opponents at the time said it was about.
Some other very strange things took place around that time. Such as the confiscation of average Joe American’s gold and the apparent deliberate trashing of his currency.
Perhaps despising truth in favour of pragmatism is Judis’ problem.
While one needs to be pragmatic (realistic) in one’s dealings with events, “realism” that does not deal with reality is no help to anyone.
It’s just a lie.

“…the major New Deal reforms of the Second New Deal, supposedly achieved because of the mass protests of organized labor and the Left, were actually favored by and vigorously supported by the large commercial and financial interests.”

The Democratic Party and its “moderate” Republican allies are intrinsically beholden to the large corporations. I am amazed how few people realize the logical implications of the economic theories of people like John Maynard Keynes and John Kenneth Galbraith. These folks are advocating on behalf of crony capitalism. Are you truly against the American government being dominated by major corporate interests? If so, join the Tea Party movement.

The GOP should not be shy about rejecting Randian ethics and giving support to social services.

The thing to do is to refuse to hold social services and government regulations as sacred cows and point out that more often than not they are used as a cover for corruption i.e. what exactly has been done with the Social Security surplus all these years? How many regulations are really meant to inhibit competition or provide jobs for the politically connected?

The entire ObamaCare debate is a perfect example. Was it about providing health care or about providing health insurance? It was about insurance which is not synonymous with care.

Granted there is a correlation but putting the emphasis on the bean counting was a skewed, and cold-hearted, setting of priorities, which hopefully the GOP points out to its advantage.

I believe Obamacare was all about re-enforcing and strengthening of the union movement,which in turn strengthened socialism. The vast sums of money that he gave to the union movement was partially returned in the last election and just wait and see what the uniions give in the form of campaign funds in 2012.I think it was never about healthcare of the minorities,but they were just a vehicle.

Screeds, like the one mentioned, are about how panicked the Left is about Conservatism’s rising from the grave so soon after they believed it was safely buried. The imagery alone really has them spooked. But their collective nerves are also frayed over whether Obama will try to compromise his way to a second term. They rightly fear this. But they should take heart from the fact that Obama is an ideologue in a way that Clinton never was. The likelihood is, then, that Obama will stay the course and both he and his party will get shellacked again in 2012. That should make the scared little lefties happy.

I’m going to gently and respectfully disagree with the first part of your thesis – that the left is panicked. The way I see screeds such as the one in question is that they’re part of the left’s playbook, e.g. Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals. I don’t see them as desperate or threatened, but rather as ongoing attempts to “own” the discussion and frame it in terms which are beneficial to them.

I think what you’re seeing as desperation, is their recognition that they have their greatest impact when they can divert discussions from facts and reason over to perceptions and feelings. You’re wanting to discuss factual matters and they’re much more interested in owning the topic of discussion and framing it the way they think will provide them the greatest gain. It’s as though the two sides are speaking different languages, which suits the left quite nicely, thank you.

If you believe John Judis is good journalist you also believe the JournoList conspiracy was an organization pledged to promoting even-handed reportage that chose for some quirky reason to remain secret. It has now reformed itself as Cabalist, but its mission remains the same: to use the MSM to push a stubbornly left-wing agenda aimed at centralizing power in the hands of an ideological elite bent on, yes, “transforming” America the way European Union counterparts are reshaping the political configuration of the continent. That involves ceding public and national influence to increasingly remote and all-powerful bureaucracies in Brussels. Before the age of the internet, there were few ways to check the influence of the left-wing ideologues in their pose of honest brokers of information. Thanks to the internet, peerless critics like Ron Radosh can dismantle their faulty analyses and outright lies within days or even hours.

Free market economics is best to create wealth for the vast majority of citizens. But are you a graduate of an “elite” university? In that case, you might want to embrace Keynesian economics! The works of John Maynard Keynes rationalized the power grabbing of the elites. They supposedly had the duty to run the country on behalf of the common folk. The elites are to become benevolent dictators—and be well compensated for carrying out their solemn duties.

The word I heard was that Obama plans to be reelected
during a brief economic uptick brought on by QE2, and
blame the subsequent prolonged inflation and recession
on the Republicans; Is Judas, pardon me, Judis, laying
the groundwork ?

The deadwood from the housing bubble is only half gone, and there needs to be a second “dip” to clear it out. The government is printing money or borrowing it to prop that dead wood up, and it a false good feeling in the short run–like cocaine–and unsustainable in the long run.

I’ve read about when fascism first got started, in the 1920s in Italy, it was touted & hailed as the “third way” (which creeped me out when Tony Blair used it as well) between free market capitalism and socialism/communism. It was embraced by big business because the businesses weren’t being nationalized, but were allowed monopolies. Krupp was still a private business under the Nazis.

I don’t think that Obama is an outright socialist/communist, I don’t get the vibe that he wants to actually run businesses — too much work. I do get the vibe that he wants to tell business what to do, which does make him a fascist. I’m not calling him that as a pejorative, as so many on the left did with W (& Reagan, thus utterly severing the word from its definition) but simply where he fits on the political-economic scale. He’s certainly not a free market capitalist, nor is he advocating mercantilism. So if we leave out socialism/marxism, the only thing left is fascism. Not a violent Mussolini (or the guy to his north) but a softcore version.

Crony capitalism is simply another name for the political-economic side of fascism. Now we don’t really have a physical violent tradition in the US (unlike Europe, which is why the fascists in Italy & Germany were able to be so physically violent so early) but use rhetoric. Which is why the left is filled with digital brownshirts, not the left.

“Engaged intellectuals” frequently lose all perspective. Judis seems to be among the latest examples. Many of today’s “liberals” assert that President Obama is a man of moderation. Quite a few probably really believe that. Others hide an agenda that they know will lead to a large increase in the size of the government and a fiscal crisis that will likely compel the adoption of a value-added tax.

It seems to me that the liberals of today do not realize how far they are straying from the vital center of American sentiment–or maybe they do, but simply think they have a duty to be in the vanguard of radical change.

“As for Judis’ new claim of extremism, Cost writes the following, to which Judis should take note:
‘Once upon a time, the Democrats promised a reasonable social safety net that would not impede growth. Social Security and Medicare were perfectly consistent, they argued, with 3 percent or better increases in annual GDP.’”

I love to hear right-wingers pine for those once-upon-a-time Democrats and their “reasonable” proposals. No doubt they were greeted as such by once-upon-a-time Republicans. Or maybe not….

“It is socialism. It moves the country in a direction which is not good for anyone, whether they be young or old. It charts a course from which there will be no turning back.”
—Senator Carl Curtis (R-NE), in 1965, opposing Medicare

“The doctor begins to lose freedoms; it’s like telling a lie, and one leads to another. First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then the doctors aren’t equally divided geographically, so a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him you can’t live in that town, they already have enough doctors. You have to go someplace else. And from here it is only a short step to dictating where he will go.”
—Ronald Reagan, in 1961, arguing against the creation of Medicare

One of the reasons for the marxists over the top rhetoric is to goad conservatives. Obviously, much of what they say is so ridiculous that even they can’t possibly believe it, so there are other reasons. Of course, one of the reasons is that marxism appeals most strongly to people either with no reasoning ability (i.e., welfare queens and college professors), but that can’t be the only reason for the 24×7 lies, since those groups have already been bought and paid for.

So goading conservatives makes sense as one of the reasons. After watching the Tucson murders play out over the last couple of weeks, they appear to have been successful at goading Palin into reacting; after which, of course, they vilified her for that reaction. Whether she would have been better off not reacting at all is hard to say. But there can be no question that their tactic worked.

Conservatives would be wise to use the tactic in kind. Republic leaders should never speak about the marxists in any but with the most explicit descriptions (i.e., liars, communists, marxists, America-haters). You can tell with 100% certainty that it would work, because the left works quadruple time to prevent it…going so far as to become apoplectic if anybody even suggests that little lenin is a socialist, which is a laughably mild way to put it.

Unless the right responds in kind to the slurs of the left, we will go into the 2012 election with the left having painted conservatives as drooling mass murderers, and the right having painted Obama as a genuinely nice man with whom we have a few policy disagreements because he cares about people and we want to greedily lower our own taxes.

Wake up Ron. We live under a soft communist dictatorship. The “press” (and this of course includes TNR – the “New” Republic, Ron, you get it?) is just soviet “press” lite version. The Tucson massacre was a shot across the bow, for those who didn’t get the message of Nov 4, 2008. Actually, the Seattle cop killing was the first one, but that went totally unnoticed. Not the second one, though, in Arizona.

“How on earth Judis could have ignored a 45-year-old magazine article is anyone’s guess.”

Judis’s article is about historical events, including that time frame.

BTW, your namesake (2nd only to Pharaoh in Ancient Egypt) was a good example of National Socialism for a benevolent purpose – saving Egypt and the world from a prophesied famine. But it still resulted in slavery.

An eighteen year old college freshman may not be expected to know about Frances Fox Piven—but anyone who is a longtime political analyst like John B. Judis should be very knowledgeable concerning the damage caused to New York City by the Piven & Cloward strategy of some forty years ago. These vile individuals should almost be a household name in America.

What discourages me is that the MSM still has readers and listeners. It is easier to pick out the truth from the HuffingtonPost than from the WashingtonPost, but yet people keep buying the crap and quoting it as gospel.

“Now, he claims, Republicans are trying to dismantle the entire New Deal edifice, not to stop overextended programs rejected by our countrymen, like ObamaCare. It is a pure and simple “counterrevolutionary party” that wants victory at any cost, even if it means destroying our entire government.”

Ron – I have to agree with you about Judis, but I have to strongly disagree with you about the New Deal. As for Judis, what he is saying reflects the Left’s attitutde about itself, that its intentions and actions are pure) and about others, that they are all sinners (although I am sure they do not think in such stark theological terms). The consequence is that the Left is always right, while the Right is never right, and indeed, the Right is sinful and so must be compared to the most monstrous demons of the past (as happened during the recent Obamacare debate when Republicans were compared to Nazis).

As for the New Deal, it extended a depression, which should been over by 1934, almost all the way to WWII. It created uncertainty and in some cases was downright destructive (e.g., the national industrial recovery act). Then of course it left us with the Ponzi scheme known as Social Security. When Madoff’s Ponzi scheme was uncovered, he went to prison. What do we do with the Federal government that has in essence done the same thing? With respect to the New Deal, please read Amity Shlaes’ book, The Forgotten Man. It paints a very dark picture of the New Deal. (And BTW, just because large corporation are in favor of something, that does not necessarily it make good for society.)

‘As Cost writes: “Over the last 60 years, Republican strength has moved southward and westward into territory once controlled by the Democrats.” He goes on to explain that “the pro-growth policies of the Republican Party made new suburbs a natural home for these voters.”’

There are a number of thorough studies that clearly show the Republicans did not convert hard core white racists of the South. Those individuals remained with the Democratic Party! The GOP attracted new members because of its military polices—and stance on free market economics! Once again, I am not talking about anecdotal evidence, but peer review studies.

Hmm this in my mailbox this morning-
do you hear anything “compromising” in the tone or words? I see some ATTACK words too:

from Biden:we did not lose sight of what we came to do.
.. some say we have accomplished more in two years than any administration since Roosevelt’s.
…, we will need to defend what we’ve achieved together as aggressively as we pursue the goals that remain…..combat social and economic injustice….and I won’t tell you the fights ahead are going to get any easier.

But I didn’t sign up for a cake walk. …We’re here to move our country forward. We’re here to lay a new foundation for this country (yeah overthrow that old document that O says is outdated and above tard saysis anachronism written by old white slavers)

….
OAS sent a letter too- fearmongering at it’s best- no statistics afew anecdotal horror stories to prove that INSURANCE COMPANIES are evil and then fantasies as faacts
Every single Republican — all 242 — voted for repeal.

This is a vote for insurance companies. There is no other way to put it.

Because if the question is what is best for Americans, repeal would never come up: Health reform is already at work improving the lives of millions of people. Repeal will result in 32 million fewer Americans with health coverage — and add $230 billion to the deficit over the next 10 years.